DESIGNING A CUSTOMER CENTRIC ORGANIZATIONCreating and delivering a leading Customer Experience is often a challenge for organizations. Understanding what the key enablers are can ensure that yours overcome this.
By Azhar Kholwadia
Customers’ expectations have significantly shifted. Calling an organization or being able to self-serve on-line is no longer enough. Self-serve, multi-channel of-ferings and personalization are now the norm, with 76% of customers expecting organizations to under-stand their needs and expectations.
Customers are no longer wowed by this, but are ex-pectant of it.
Whether this is down to ‘Always on Customer Service’ or the rise of Millennials and Generation Z, who both account for more than 60% of the global population is debatable. Both Millennials and Generation Z are more likely to leave an organization based on a poor customer experience compared to older generations, which only emphasizes the need for organizations to stay relevant, competitive and customer centric.
This paper outlines what challenges we at MHP have supported our clients on, enabling them to meet cus-tomers rising and ever changing expectations, by trans-forming the way in which they operate.
It’s no longer tomorrow’s experience. It’s todays.
21. https://www.salesforce.com/research/customer-expectations/
2. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/millennials-gen-z-outnumbered-2019-global-population-demographic-bloomberg-a8502251.html
It´s about personalization.
34. https://www.forrester.com/report/Customer+Experience+Drives+Revenue+Growth+2016/-/E-RES125102
5 & 6. https://www.salesforce.com/research/customer-expectations/
14%increase in
Compound Annual Revenue Growth (CAGR) for Customer Experience (CX) leaders compared
to CX laggards.
70% of customers say
understanding how they use their products
and service is very important.
79% of customers are willing to share
relevant information in return for
a personalized experience.
70% of customers say
understanding how they use their
products and service is very important.
Identifying the need to define a Customer strategy has typically been seen
as the starting point in an organizations journey in becoming a leading, Cus-
tomer Centric organization. This is only one facet in reaching such a goal as
there are four other business critical elements that are required in order to
become Customer Centric. These elements also act as key enablers to the
major transformation that your organization will go through. We have iden-
tified the below key enablers, alongside having a Customer Strategy:
Having a clear understanding, amongst your employ-ees and Customers about your vision, why you believe in it and how you deliver it.
Finding the optimum point between have a clearly defined, robust and thorough strategy and delivering change at pace.
Creating data driven decisions, utilising both quanti-tative data (typically system produced) and qualitative data (employee verbatim).
Clearly communicate your reason for change with all those that are involved or impacted, ensuring everyone is working towards the same objective.
It´s about four key enablers to designing a Customer Centric Organization
4
BRAND
BALANCE
INSIGHTS
COMMITMENT
Knowing your vision, what you stand for and why is key. Ensuring that your employees, from board level to con-tact centre agents, and your customers know this is fundamental to the success of your organization. Identifying exact-ly who your target market is and why, through techniques such as personas, user research or segmentation, allows you to then tailor the customer journeys based on the customers preferences. Whether that may be through the channels by which you commu-nicate, your content marketing strategy or your product offer-ings, understanding what appeals to your specific customer groups, enables you to position your brand accordingly.
A strong brand can often help to com-pensate for a small number of medio-cre interactions. This can occur when a company is going through a period of transformation. Ensuring that your or-ganization is therefore aligned to your vision minimises the risk of a poor cus-tomer experience.
Whilst the importance of having a clear-ly defined strategy is as paramount as ever, the risk of this strategy being ob-solete by the time it is executed is ever increasing. This is unlikely to be down to the fact that what was set out was incorrect at the time of conception, but by the time the strategy has been im-plemented, either partially or fully, the world has changed and moved on, al-most rendering the change to be use-
less.
Research has found that almost 70% of transformation pro-grammes fail to meet their stated goals.
One major reason for this is the inability to establish a change in mind sets and behaviours. Finding the optimum bal-ance between having a clearly defined and accurate strategy and an empow-ered team who will check, challenge and change whilst transforming your business is fundamental to reaching your strategic objectives.
57. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/the-how-of-transformation
Knowing your vision, what you stand for and why is key.
BRAND BALANCE
Given that 79% of Customers are will-ing to share information in return for a personalized experience, the need to le-verage your organizations data is para-mount. Utilising the wealth of ‘quanti-tative’ data that is available to find and deliver improvements in your product or service can often be a challenge due to data quality, data consistency or data extraction issues.
Whilst these issues must be addressed for long term sustainabil-ity, the ability to lever-age ‘qualitative’ data can provide just as much value. Engag-ing with the people and experts that are embedded within your organization is key, as often they will know which areas are causing the most pain to customers, through their daily interactions, either customer fac-ing or back office.
This can be done through 1-2-1 inter-views, surveys, focus groups, user diaries and more. This qualitative assessment not only provides the benefit of business insights, but also as a valued and often underappreciated engagement tool.
A customer centric organization can only be accomplished if every member of your organization not only under-stands, but also believes in your reason for being and need for change. Whether you provide a product or a service, each member of your organization must be-lieve in what you are trying to achieve
and why. Understand-ing why their role is important and how it contributes to your objective ensures complete alignment.
This can often be done by using tools such as mission statements, design principles or values. Each work on
their own merit, but fundamental to the success of each is ensuring that what-ever may be written, is consistently prac-tised by all members of the organization, starting from the top down.
6
Understanding why their role is impor-tant and how it con-tributes to your ob-jective ensures com-plete alignment.
INSIGHTS COMMITMENT
7
It´s all aboutService.
8 & 9. http://info.microsoft.com/rs/157-GQE-382/images/EN-US-CNTNT-ebook-2018-State-of-Global-Customer-Service.pdf
10. https://www.genesys.com/about/resources/customer-experience-report
95% of customers cite
customer service as important in their
choice of and loyalty to a brand.
61% of customers switch
brands based on poor customer service.
1 in 3 customers are willing
to pay a fee to receive a higher level of customer service.
And it´s all aboutpartnership.
8
We believe in working in partnerships with our clients, using our Customer Centric Organization Design approach to deliver sustainable solutions in each of the four areas identified above.
Our team of experts deliver End to End solutions, supporting our clients throughout their journey from defining the enabling strategy, creating the framework for change, delivering leading tech-nology solutions and supporting the teams with the transition to BAU.
About MHP.
Excellence is our fundamental philosophy. We strive for excellence in everything we do – from working daily with our customers, to executing our processes, all the way to driving our strategy.
This mindset is being reflected throughout MHP by eight core values that are firmly embedded into our company culture. Excellence, for us, means focusing continuously on the needs of our customers and our employees.
Contact usIf you would like to know about our approach to Customer Experience you can contact [email protected]
If you would like to know more about the services that MHP UK provide contact [email protected]
9
